How global warming affects our architecture

During the last few dec­ades, our per­cep­tion, inter­pret­a­tions and con­cepts of archi­tec­ture have been chan­ging rap­idly. It’s almost incon­gru­ous: such huge and soph­ist­ic­ated objects, which require lots of time and fin­ance to real­ize, merely became products, which could eas­ily fit in our pock­ets. One excit­ing example – would you like to become an owner of pavil­ion height of 11 meters, a cre­ation of archi­tects? You can simply buy it on eBay. It’s def­in­itely not dif­fi­cult: take a part in an auc­tion, pay 30 thou­sand dol­lars for the deliv­ery and this is it – you own a pavil­ion. A per­fect gift for a wife, mother or brother and there’s only one head­ache — it might not fit under your Christmas tree.

Meanwhile, archi­tec­ture matches with almost mostly beloved word used more than toi­let paper nowadays – eco­logy. The greatest archi­tects announce – eco­lo­gical archi­tec­ture is archi­tec­ture of the future. Ecology, mobil­ity and sim­pli­city. These fea­tures give a great oppor­tun­ity to com­pete in the world mar­ket. “Infinski” is an archi­tects’ com­pany based in Chile which offers ser­vices and ideas for all cli­mate zones as well as meets the require­ments of dif­fer­ent clients.

A house seen in the pic­tures, the so called “Manifesto”, has a con­struc­tion based on simply four ship con­tain­ers; two adjustable wooden plat­forms were used for the exter­ior of the facade. Some crit­ics claim that with this kind of mater­i­als “Infinski” makes their archi­tec­ture rad­ic­ally mod­ern. Eco friendly con­struc­tions are not the only ones used for pro­jects of these houses, depend­ing on the cli­mate zone sys­tems of renew­able energy are imple­men­ted either. Offering eco­lo­gical archi­tec­ture, design, dec­or­a­tion, even fur­niture and pieces of art from A to Z the com­pany states that its mis­sion is to real­ize pro­jects which require a min­imum amount of time and money but are marked by the great qual­ity and cre­ated using the most innov­at­ive tech­no­lo­gies. The cost for build­ing this kind of house is 79 thou­sand euro.

It is claimed that mater­i­als used by “Infinski” are not only eco­lo­gical but they func­tion per­fectly, too. Let’s say, an out­side facade is panel coated and it may be eas­ily trans­formed as well as read­jus­ted depend­ing on tem­per­at­ure of the sea­son. The main func­tion of these white pan­els is to pro­tect rooms from tor­rid sun in sum­mer and because of spars cav­it­ies, air cir­cu­la­tion is always guar­an­teed in premises. I won­der how this would fit really cold cli­mate. Would houses eas­ily fit without any cost rise? I doubt it because first of all, heat insu­la­tion is required in winter. On the other hand, per­haps it’s pos­sible to use renew­able energy sys­tems. Still, it’s doubt­ful that we will start build­ing this type of houses in the short run.

To me, one of the most fas­cin­at­ing fea­tures of this archi­tec­ture is the “Lego” effect: it is a house made from par­tic­u­lar details, it may be eas­ily trans­formed (expan­ded or mini­fied) and the build­ing of this house lasts up to three months. As people’s demands get sim­pler, min­im­al­ism pre­vails all pages of fash­ion magazines and the rect­an­gu­lar shape becomes most wanted there’s little won­der that ship con­tain­ers turned out to be a great build­ing mater­ial. I take notice of these con­tain­ers in new pro­jects more and more often – dorm­it­or­ies, shops, even pavil­ions for gal­ler­ies are made exactly from them

It’s only a ques­tion of time when these tech­no­lo­gies will arrive to our every­day liv­ing solu­tions and for those, whose liv­ing is based on prin­ciples of eco­logy, “Infinski” sug­gests tak­ing a part in pro­ject by bring­ing their own ideas. It’s pleas­ant that not only archi­tects are wel­come – the com­pany would appre­ci­ate the help of paint­ers, sculptors, pho­to­graph­ers, design­ers etc. More inform­a­tion here.

About author:

Gintarė Žitkevičiūtė
Gintare Zitkeviciute is Art Pit’s thinker and doer. In her work practise, she values lean approach, creativity and quick decisions. She doesn't like working with random people and thinks that a team is a heart of successful project. For that reason, she carefully picks people she works with on everyday basis. She is mostly interested in innovatio... Read further >